I have struggled with my gender identity for most of my life. I was born male but I can remember as early as first grade telling my parents I wanted to be a girl. My parents are not on the fun side of very christian so this didn't go over very well. It came up a few times during childhood and my parents telling me I was wrong etc. (I don't really want to get in too deep on that whole situation because it's a long and unnecessary conversation). This struggling and at the time not really knowing that there was anyone else out there who had feelings even relatively similar to mine led to a lot of anxiety issues and depression from an early age but that's not important right now. Most of the time when I dream I am a woman and it feels freeing specifically freeing from those anxieties and mental pitfalls I have built. These dreams are never overtly sexually in nature in fact I have never had a sex dream as either gender. Having dreams in both make it hard to picture or imagine myself. Most of the time though I do feel comfortable in my skin, most of the time I feel happy with myself as a male, but at about two days a week give or take a day I don't. During those couple of days I usually find excuses not to go out or be social because I feel really uncomfortable and I say things that can be confusing to the people I am around. No one knows at all about my issues with gender identity except my parents and they don't acknowledge it. Some of these days where I am forced to be out due to lack of sick days or excuses I can get uncomfortable to the point of small panic attacks. Today I had a fairly large panic attack which is why I am writing this today. I have tried putting on women's clothing and it has helped so long as I avoid the mirrors and don't go out at all. I feel like I have no hope of being passable and seeing that I am not or the thoughts of people seeing me and thinking I am someone I am not that day makes me feel much worse. The times I have gone all out I can get to the point where I feel like I made a mistake when I feel male. I am at a loss at what to do about it so any thoughts or comments would help.
Ok. When you say you put on women's clothing...have you tried just underclothes. No one needs to know you are wearing a bra and knickers except you. And you can wear them out....would that help?
I have tried that and that helps here and there, I also have a few regular women's clothing articles that when they are on people can't tell they're not men's clothing. I know though which again helps.
I can relate so much to this. To me being social is difficult because I'm aware nobody is seeing the real me, so I avoid people as much as I can, even if people seems to like me for some reason (the wrong reason, I'm sure of that). I admire you for telling your parents as such an early age. I had to keep quiet about myself, knowing it was no use (there was no one like me around), and I failed because I was doing all the things boys do, and behaving like one. The school called my parents from time to time to report about my bad behavior (playing with boys, refusing to play with girls, acting like a boy, being rowdy, faul language,etc). Not even my good grades would free me from this humiliation. There are churches that accept us, perhaps you could try some of them to contact your parents, at least they will listen to them and know this has nothing to do with religion, and a lot to do with what they preach : Love one another. I'm sorry you are going through this, but you need to take the steps to solve it yourself. Sadly, this problem doesn't belong to the kind of issues that solve themselves by waiting, they only get worse. I'm on my 30s now, and if I had the chance to go back and try to solve this mess, I definitely would. It seems to me you should reach out either to a therapist, or to some LGBT association. They'll give you a fresh, unbiased opinion, and it will help you to put things in perspective. I was in an awful place, and they did what they could back then. It gets better, little by little. Some days are better than others, but you are moving forwards, not backwards or stuck like you seem to be right now.
Just having people say they can relate really means something to me, and I think you are right Michael when you say I should see a therapist or join a support group. The more I talk about this the more I can tell I need face-time with someone I can talk openly and honestly about this with. Not to say you guys aren't incredibly helpful on here. There's just something to be said about being able to make eye contact when revealing something. You're right I am stuck and I need to get over this fear of moving forward with it and that's a step all on it's own just finding a group/therapist. Any suggestions for that when I am looking for one?
